Published 4:00 am, Sunday, February 27, 2000

But touch his 20-year-old Hewlett-Packard 12C and you're playing with fire.

HP's ubiquitous business calculator, with its time-tested Reverse Polish Notation logic, has been Shorenstein's best technological friend since he was a Wall Street real estate attorney in the early '80s.

Now the chairman and chief executive officer of the Shorenstein Co., among the nation's largest and oldest privately held real estate firms and San Francisco's dominant commercial landlord, Shorenstein, 45, still eshews newer gadgets when he has to analyze amortized loans and figure internal rates of return.

"To this date, it's amazing. It's still pretty much the industry standard," says the executive, who has four or five 12Cs scattered around his office, home and car - each with his initials etched into the metal.

"If you end up at a meeting," he says, "they sort of get interchanged."

One reason lately for number-crunching is the Shorenstein Co.'s ventures into new frontiers: the wiring of entire office buildings for broad-bandwidth connections.

"The real estate industry has tended to be very antiquated and fragmented. ... The technology exists, but it hasn't been organized and brought to buildings in an efficient manner until now."

What exactly is new?

"Up to now, the tenant would call the telephone company to get a T1 line. The telephone company would drop the line somewhere out in the elevator area. The tenant would have to figure out how to get it to the desk, so somebody from some company would come with a tool belt on."

Where do you step in?

"We've said, 'How can we provide this clear tenant need most efficiently?' There are many other concepts that we're either invested in or definitely looking at - anything that relates to information (such as) construction management services, billing and receivables."

An example of the new, ultra-wired office?

"AirTouch (1 California St., a

Shorenstein Co. building). As part of their tenant build-out, they wired the entire building with fiber and have been obviously a significant user."

Your first computer?

"My HP 12C, circa 1981. I get a kick whenever we hire MBAs out of Stanford or wherever, and they come into the office with their HP 12C. ... They say, 'Do you know how to use this?' Come over here. I'll show you."

And beyond your 12C?

"I use a Palm Pilot as much as anything because I've got so many addresses and telephone numbers in my Rolodex that I can't keep a hard copy any more."

Websites visited recently?

"A commercial real estate news site, www.ipgdirect.com, which carried a story about our recent purchase of an office building in New Orleans. And www.shorenstein.com - really. We recently developed the site, and I like to check it out from time to time to make sure it stays current."

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